This article appeared in the main newspaper in Singapore. The author, Dr. Giam Choo Hoo is well known in conservation circles as a proponent of wildlife consumption.

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The Straits Times 1 Dec 06Shark Finning: Shark’s fin soup-eat without guiltBy Giam Choo Hoo, For The Straits Times

REPORTS which attribute shark decimation to the consumption of shark’s finsoup show that Western activists have succeeded in convincing the publicthat sharks are killed for their fins only, and that all fins are cruellycut off while the sharks are still alive.

They paint a distorted picture. There is no reason to be ashamed whenordering the popular soup at a restaurant.

Sharks are caught in virtually all parts of the world - by fishermen inpoor countries and by large fishing fleets from developed countries. Nostate has banned shark fishing and only a few have set limits in certainareas. Indeed, some members of the European Union are catching, consumingand trading sharks on a big scale.

The Shark Alliance points out that ‘Spain, Portugal, the UK and France areamong the world’s top 20 shark-fishing nations that are responsible for 80per cent of the global catch’.

Despite the strongly declared objectives of the Fisheries Commission inBrussels, there are very few restrictions on fishing for sharks inEuropean waters.

The meat of dogfishes, smoothhounds, catsharks, skates and rays is in highdemand by European consumers. The situation in Canada and the UnitedStates is similar: The blue shark is sought after as a sport fish whilethe porbeagle, mako and spiny dogfish are part of the commercial fishery.Other species are caught, either targeted or as by-catch that isunintentional or incidental, during fishing operations.

It is a serious problem in most European countries. Fishing fleetstargeting tuna and swordfish take substantial numbers of high-sea sharks .Nonetheless, sharks are not as endangered as other wildlife, for example,the sturgeon, which is sought after for caviar.

There are over 400 species of sharks, and to claim they are on the vergeof extinction is to make a sweeping but inaccurate generalisationequivalent to claiming that all birds are endangered.

The UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of WildlifeFauna and Flora (CITES) lists only three sharks in its Appendix II. Theconsumption and trade of species in this category is subject tocertification. The three are the basking shark, the great white shark andthe whale shark.

The remaining 397 shark species are not classified at all and can befreely traded and caught.

Fins are by-products of the fishing industry. Though they are valuable,sharks are not normally killed for their fins. A fishing fleetspecialising in catching sharks only for their fins would quickly go outof business.

The perception that it is common practice to kill sharks for only theirfins - and to cut them off whilst the sharks are still alive - is wrong.No one denies that such cruelty exists. The footage of ‘live-finning’ hasbeen shown all over the world.

However, these sensational pictures obscure the fact that many within theindustry are against such practices. The vast majority of fins in themarket are taken from sharks after their death. This is the preliminaryfinding of a review made with the assistance of shark experts, fishermen,captains of big fishing ships and representatives of fishery departments,the fishing industry, fish markets and fishing ports.

The barbaric practice of ‘live-finning’ is done by some long-line fishingboats, principally targeting tuna. When they get the less valuable sharksin their hooks, they cut the fins and throw the sharks into the water tomake room for tuna. This deplorable practice is outlawed in manycountries.

The anti-fin group has misrepresented the facts. By aggressively floodingprint, TV and Internet media with selective images, they have portrayed anuntruth: that all fins are derived from ‘live-finning’. Their aim? Theywant shark’s fin soup to be shunned.

The truth is this: Sharks will continue to be caught and killed on a widescale by the more organised and sophisticated fishing nations. Targetingshark’s fin soup will not stop this accidental catch.

The fins from these catches will be thrown away or turned into animal feedand fertilisers if shark’s fin soup is shunned. The practice to salvageand sell the sharks’ fins gives value to discards from the fishingindustry of the world, benefiting both poor and rich countries .

I am not an advocate for greater consumption of shark’s fin soup. I amsaying that it is not a shameful culture.

The writer is a member of the Cites Animals Committee and a member of theRoyal College of Veterinary Surgeons, England.

"Fins are by-products of the fishing industry. Though they are valuable,
sharks are not normally killed for their fins. A fishing fleet
specialising in catching sharks only for their fins would quickly go out
of business."

Well, i certainly disagree with that one.... Always amazed and disgusted me to see the foreign fishing fleets in palau offload nothing but shark fin from the boats.. you could watch it day after day after day...

rarely saw a tuna....

i think the most amazing one was a pile of fins about 7 feet high that the customs guys (they were doing some investigations at the time..5 boats one after the other pulled in, no fish, just fins) pulled off a boat one day and put on the dock, all obviously from juveniles... thankfully Palau did start up some measures to put a stop to it not long after that.

and when the price per pound of fin exceeds tuna and shark meat by such a large margin?!?!?!?! you can fit a lot more fins on the boat without the rest of the shark.. therefore, more profit.....

they have a proverb for that in the Netherlands "de pot verwijt de ketel dat ie zwart ziet".

It meens here that by saying that there are shark fisheries and shark fisheries problems in the other countries, the problem with finning is in someway diminished. It looks like this member of cites has led his ear to rest with the industry too much. Or maybe its just a bureacrat, that never watches in port.

i think the most amazing one was a pile of fins about 7 feet high that the customs guys (they were doing some investigations at the time..5 boats one after the other pulled in, no fish, just fins) pulled off a boat one day and put on the dock, all obviously from juveniles... thankfully Palau did start up some measures to put a stop to it not long after that.

Saw the same in the harbour in Mauritius about 10 years ago. The only difference is Mauritius didn't do anything to mitigate the problem. The result is that now sharks are pretty much gone, with few exceptions...

This person has been saying things like this for years. He reflects these views at Cites meetings, and he lobbies for just about every form of animal use. To be fair, he's not the only person being paid to do this, but he's particularly vocal.

Unfortunately, he has the ear of people who are ignorant and/ or xenophobic (hence his ability to get these one-sided diatribes published in the Singapore newspaper regularly). He plays the "White people can't tell us what to do" card a lot. I'm sure he's intelligent enough to know better, but it's a useful ploy to misdirect the less intelligent and less well-informed away from the facts.

Note his concluding sentence: "I am saying that it is not a shameful culture.", which implies that the sharkfin debate is about shaming Chinese/ Asian culture. This misleading suggestion is intentional, in order to incite a negative emotional response. Note also Dr Giam's attack on "Western activists" in his opening sentence. Again, he's trying to engender hatred.

Sadly, many people (including many divers) in Asia fall for this ploy.

Though i live in Colorado USA, i belong to a singapore dive club. we will be taking action on this to be sure. i will also be there in a few days and do some diging around...but you know...the culture there is incredibly educated and at the same time incredibly resistant to any changes that challenge tradition...even when evidence is overwhelming...a real shame and a loss if you ask me.

Giam and his Tung Lok lovin' buddies will always cite CITES as a defense. If it's not on the endangered list then it can't be endangered right? Wonder how many species they missed since 1973? I can't find the stats now but it was a big number.
Thing is Straits Times will probably not print the rebuttals.

Wags, when I went to Shenzhen with a group of Gwai Lohs who refused sharks fin on principle, the hosts also said no. But they also spoke in a dialect (hoping all the gringos wouldn't understand) that these people were just being a pain. They were just being 'polite' but they aren't about to change their ways until the government says so, and that cold day in hell is the millenium before that happens.

Drew
Moderator
"Journalism is what someone else does not want printed, everything else is public relations."

"I was born not knowing, and have only had a little time to change that here and there.

Your recent article of 1 Dec 06, “Shark Finning: Shark’s fin soup-eat without guilt” by Giam Choo Hoo, gives a very distorted picture of the impact that shark fining is having on the ocean’s environments and habitats. It is true that many nations catch sharks and consume the whole fish, but it is the practice of solely catching sharks for their fins and returning the rest of the fish to the sea that is causing the greatest impact to shark populations, and therefore the ecosystems that they form part of.

It is estimated that between 150 and 200 million sharks are caught every year, and the majority are returned, dead or dying, to the sea minus fins because it is immensely more lucrative for any fisherman to fill his boat with only shark fins, rather than the whole fish which would attract considerably less value in the market. Removing an alpha predator in these numbers from any ecosystem will have a dramatic effect on the marine life in these systems. For instance parrot fish might now flourish in a reef system devoid of predators which leads to excessive grazing on coral polyps, which kills the local reef, which then becomes covered with algae, which then has an effect on carbon exchange in the system which has an effect on temperatures and chemical balances etc.

I have been SCUBA diving regularly around the world and especially in Asia over the last thirty years, and I am staggered with the reduction of marine life that I have seen over this period. Large marine creatures and especially sharks are completely absent from reefs that only ten years ago were thriving.

The extraordinary thing is that this has in part come about because of a marketing distortion around the ‘cultural’ habit of wanting to appear prosperous by eating shark fin soup. It is extraordinary not only because of the amazing success of this marketing, but because of the fact that the shark’s fin is probably the most unhealthy part of the shark to eat in the first place. It is well known that Singaporeans have higher mercury and heavy metal readings than many other nationalities, this is because of the amount of sea food that is eaten here. Interestingly the shark concentrates most of the impurities found in the seas from industrial pollution, in yes, you guessed it, the fins. Mercury and lead ingested into humans are not only responsible for mental aberrations (like wanting to eat shark fin soup?) but also loss of libido. Maybe this is nature’s way of restoring balance?

Haha - I was thinking of writing to Harry Lee himself as he is disturbed that Singaporeans are not making enough babies. Now if he thought that Shark Fin Soup was actually contributing to low birth rates ... well there's an idea

We live in a political world. Singapore politicians (and make no mistake, this guy is a politician) are no more likely to condemn Chinese eating habits than an American President is likely to take steps to cut energy consumption at home. How many Americans were even aware of the Kyoto Accord? Burn as much fossil fuel as you like, eat as much sharkfin as you like. It all adds up to very much the same thing. Sadly.Why would someone living in Detroit care about climatic change in, say, Australia? He wants air-conditioning, central heating and a big car. Do you blame him?I wrote a piece once suggesting that by buying Chinese-made products, we were pushing up the price of sharkfin soup. I got fired from the Shark Trust for it. More politics!http://www.divernet....p...splay&show=

I buy my own photographic kit. Diving equipment manufacturers and diving services suppliers get even-handed treatment from me whether they choose to advertise in the publications I write for or not. All the equipment I get on loan is returned as soon as it is finished with.Did you know you can now get Diver Mag as an iPad/Android app?

Your article makes for interesting reading! Perhaps I could add a rider - 'conservation' starts at home - in Britain for example, our fisheries policies/laws/enforcement and even knowledge bases are utterly SHAMBOLIC. I've dived to record the effects of experimental trawling - incredibly destructive. I've watched scallop dredgers repeatedly dredge one area until it must be nigh on sterile and have written to politicians to ask why they've made the decisions that they so proudly announce as being conservation measures (I'm still waiting for an in depth reply to my last query as apparently the questions needed to be dealt with by the relevant department which is pretty worrying as a decision had been already made).

Its no good going on about other parts of the world if your own isn't in order. Whilst global problems need global solutions, none will occur until we have a minimal concensus on the world's last wild food resource and its viability - and this starts at home.

Perhaps I could add a rider - 'conservation' starts at home - in Britain for example, our fisheries policies/laws/enforcement and even knowledge bases are utterly SHAMBOLIC.

I'm with you, Paul.

I buy my own photographic kit. Diving equipment manufacturers and diving services suppliers get even-handed treatment from me whether they choose to advertise in the publications I write for or not. All the equipment I get on loan is returned as soon as it is finished with.Did you know you can now get Diver Mag as an iPad/Android app?